


Separation Anxiety

by grimcognito



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Angst, Co-Dependance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimcognito/pseuds/grimcognito
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone knows Red Alert does better with Inferno around, but what happens to Inferno without Red Alert?</p>
<p>Contains some serious co-dependance and non-explicit suicidal thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Separation Anxiety

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fulcrumisthebomb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fulcrumisthebomb/gifts).



Inferno thought he should maybe be angry, upset, kicking down doors and demanding answers. He isn’t, though. Not anymore. And demanding anything would only make things worse.

Worse. Right. One day he’d convince himself of that.

He stared blankly at his commander as he was once more reprimanded for being too reckless, endangering himself and his team. He wanted to say the team had never been in danger. Inferno always made sure of that, made sure the only person who could get hurt was himself.

He knows it’s unhealthy to be acting the way he is, dangerous to be thinking in terms of saving everyone but himself. Yet, that knowledge does little compared to the strange numbness that has taken over. Ever since they took away Red.

Sent away with a suspension until he gets his act together, he headed to the city’s launch bay. Found a shaded corner and slumped there, staring up. Red was up there somewhere. He hadn’t been told the exact location, or given any method of contact apart from an apathetic mech who was supposed to send any messages. No matter how many he sent, he never got a response. 

Every day, he told himself it would be the last one he sent, the last time he got any hopes up that a message was waiting for him, and every day he went again and became a little more hollow inside.

He stared down at his scraped and battered hands. Red would be disgusted if he saw him, marred paint and sloppily welded injuries. His base coding was to protect, and he would do so until he ceased to function, but the one he wanted to protect the most was gone, maybe happier, maybe not, but gone. 

He would cease to function soon enough, hopefully by saving someone who actually cared to function for another vorn or two. He should probably get some help, thinking such destructive thoughts. Instead, he simply sat back and resumed looking skyward, wondering which star Red might be near.

………………………………………….

Red Alert all but vibrated in place. He was so close to the end of this smelting pit of a mission. Soon as the ship, and her disgustingly small-minded crew of short-circuited aft-heads, would be docked and he could leave once and for all. 

He’d already completed the on-board security checks and for once wasn’t tempted in the slightest to re-do them. This ship could explode the moment he stepped off and it would only be an improvement in his opinion. He’d glitched seven times and even then, not a single mech on board had bothered to comply with his protocols. Every time, they simply locked him away until he burned through his fuel, then left him just enough energon to pick himself off the floor. 

He hadn’t been forced through such humiliating since before he met—no. He wasn’t going to think of the one mech who made him want so much more than he could have. And fool that he’d been, he’d actually fallen for the act! Soon as they were separated, Inferno hadn’t bothered to even attempt contacting him, and none of his messages were answered.

He had his suspicions about the mech in charge of communications, but to miss every single one? No. Clearly, Inferno had been glad to be rid of him. Even now, just thinking his name made his spark ache. Time and willpower would fix that.

He quickly made his way off the ship, pointedly ignoring the captain’s sarcastic farewell. Once his pedes were on solid ground, he shook himself, as if ridding the settled dust of the crew’s attitude and briskly started on his way back to his own sector of the city. 

Out of the corner of his vision, he noticed a large frame slumped in the shadows, suspicion immediately spiking. No respectable mech lurked in shadows! He stormed up to the shady character, then froze as his optics adjusted to the lack of light. “I-Inferno?”

Inferno’s optics were dimmed, and he didn’t respond. His frame was battered in places and his paint scratched all to pit. Red Alert covered his mouth with his hands, horrified at the state of him and opened a comm. line on the emergency channel. //I have a mech down! Medic responder needed immediately at the Eastern docking bay!//

He sent the coordinates and once he had a response, he was left to wait until help arrived. Kneeling, he reached out and touched Inferno’s cheek, just noticing that his hand was trembling. “Primus, Inferno. What—what happened to you?”

……………………………………………

Waking up in a medbay had become par for the norm, but memory loss wasn’t normal at all. Last thing he remembered was going to the docks. What had happened?

Inferno sat up, looked around, and a nearby medic turned to him with a stern glare. “Now, I’m normally a pretty friendly, let-you-be kinda mech, but letting yourself go until you drop into stasis due to lack of self-care does not make for a happy medic.”

Stasis? He’d been that bad off? “I didn’t… I guess I didn’t realize how bad it was. Jus’ felt kinda tired.” He also hadn’t cared too much about the warning pings, shunting them right into garbage data without looking at them. He really did need help.

The medic grunted. “So I noticed. You’re lucky your friend found you, or you might have been fit for the scrap heaps.” 

“Friend?”

“Yeah. Twitchy little thing, didn’t want to tell me his designation.”

Hope flared so bright it was actually painful. It couldn’t be. He stood, pushing away the medic’s hands trying to force him back onto the berth and went for the door. It swished open just as he was about to punch the panel and there stood Red Alert, optics wide and staring up at him.

“Red?” Something must have been wrong with his vocalizer, because he hadn’t meant the name to come out so soft and pained. 

Red Alert stared for a long moment, optics tracing the lines of his face with an intensity he’d dearly missed, then nodded a fraction. “Infer—“

Inferno was curled over him, claiming kiss after desperate kiss, tiny pained noises that sounded almost like Red’s name escaping between each one. Red Alert froze, then melted into it, hands reaching up to grasp Inferno’s face, gentling the motions until they were kissing easy and soft and if it hadn’t been for the pain, worry and loneliness clouding their fields, it would have been perfect.

Inferno turned his head and buried his face between Red Alert’s neck and shoulder, clutching his frame close. “I’m sorry Red, I know ya probably don’t want me around anymore, but I’m a wreck without ya. I don’t care. I can’t seem to care, not about anything. Because you were gone.”

Red Alert stroked his hands over Inferno’s sides, confused. “I sent you messages, lots of them. Why would you think that?”

Inferno went still. “Wha—I checked every day! I sent a message every day. I never—“ He vented a harsh gust of air. “That slaggin piece of rusted scrap! He didn’t give me any of them!”

Red Alert pressed his palms to Inferno’s chassis, worried at the fury in the lines of Inferno’s frame. “’Ferno. Beating him to bits won’t help. And what do you mean, you didn’t care? You could have died!”

Inferno stopped, looked away as shame flooded his field, and Red Alert gasped. “No. No. You’re not allowed to-to leave me like that! I spent that whole mission angry because the one mech I wanted to hear from never seemed to contact me. I glitched *seven* times! They,” He pressed his face to Inferno’s chassis, forcing the words through gritted denta, “they locked me up and treated me like I had the rust plague. Finally coming home and finding you there, barely functioning. I’d break, ‘Ferno. I’m not that strong.”

Inferno tucked him close as he could. “Turns out I ain’t either, Red. Looks like we’re only good as a pair.”

“Then I guess we better stick together from now on, you-you jerk.” A weak punch landed on Inferno’s arm and he grinned. 

“I can work with that. Next time someone demands you take a solo mission I’ll lock him in a closet and you change the mission logs.”

Red Alert’s voice was indignant. “I’d never tamper with official orders! …Though I could convince a mech better suited to solitary work to take them instead.”

Pressing their forehelms together, Inferno stared him in the optics, searching for an answer. “That mean you’ll stay with me?”

Red Alert smiled just slightly, using what would become their favorite phrase. “Forever and always.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am well aware that in anything other than complete fiction, co-dependance this intense is extremely unhealthy, there is no need to point it out, this is pure self indulgence about two giant space robots. Please enjoy it for what it is.
> 
> Standard Disclaimers Apply- I do not own anything connected to Hasbro or Transformers and this is a purely fictional work that makes no profit.


End file.
